EditorialRecent gains are making us believers
Recent exhilarating victories by community groups have us believing that great outcomes at the grassroots level can be accomplished if groups of individuals get together to build coalitions and do the hard work that needs to be done to achieve a goal.

Talking Point

Why lesbian and gay New Yorkers should vote FerrerBy Lawrence C. Moss
Case law closely links civil marriage to the governments interest in creating stable environments for raising the children that result from opposite-sex couples sexual intercourse. Upon such circumstances, there is a rational basis for the DRLs limitation of marriage to one male and one female.

Glicks picks on voting on Nov. 8 ballot initiativesBy Deborah J. Glick
I am proud to represent an Assembly district which traditionally has one of the highest levels of voter turnout in the city and state. Residents in my district also tend to be very active in political campaigns. Despite this high level of involvement, many individuals are not familiar with the ballot initiatives on which they will vote next week.

ObituaryArman, 76, Tribeca artist whose medium was garbageArman, the sculptor internationally famous for combining found objects and all kinds of junk and who had a home and studio in Tribeca and an outdoor metal studio on Canal Street for 27 years, died at home Sat. Oct. 22 at the age of 76.

Stepan Lazarev, 67, muralist, sculptorStepan Lazarev, a painter, muralist and sculptor who lived and worked in the Village for 25 years, died Oct. 14 in St. Vincents Hospital of a pulmonary blood clot after surgery for a broken shoulder at the age of 67.

Ironman shows what hes made of in grueling eventsBy Judith Stiles
Through blinding sleet, Greg Jensen eerily ran past his fellow triathletes who were dropping like flies all around him because of the terrible weather during the annual Lake Placid Ironman race.

"Serving West and East Village, Chelsea, SoHo, NoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown and the Lower East Side"

Villager photo by Lorenzo Ciniglio

A boo-tiful evening for Halloween

The 32nd Annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade saw the usual array of ghosts and goblins and politically satirical costumes, as usual, and this year also paid tribute to the Hurricane Katrina victims. Mild weather brought out a big crowd. <more>

NEWSFinance board ready to fine Lopez for fraud in 2001 raceBy Lincoln Anderson
The citys Campaign Finance Board has put Councilmember Margarita Lopez on notice that it is considering assessing penalties against her for alleged violations of fraud, misrepresentation and improper payments involving her 2001 campaign finances.

City must pay $21.5 million to use Pier 97, GansevoortBy Albert Amateau
The 8-acre Gansevoort Peninsula, used for decades to park garbage trucks, burn trash and store highway salt, will be ready to become part of the Hudson River Park in January 2013, according to an agreement last week settling a lawsuit by Friends of Hudson River Park and a group of elected officials against the city.

Gate may be closed to gays in parks crowd-control planBy Lincoln Anderson
Responding to persistent complaints from Village residents about droves of gay youth streaming off the Christopher Street Pier onto Christopher Street, the Hudson River Park Trust is reportedly contemplating enacting a new crowd-control tactic that will keep the gay youth from going onto the world-famous gay boulevard  at least when they initially leave the park.

InsideDoctoroff: City must balance stability and energyBy Albert Amateau
Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff boasted to a Greenwich Village Chelsea Chamber of Commerce gathering last week about the Bloomberg administrations economic achievements so far and the administrations goals for the next four years.

Transgender plaintiffs sue gay club for barring themBy Paul Schindler
In a lawsuit filed Oct. 19 in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, three plaintiffs, including two transgendered women, charge that on at least three occasions this year, Splash Bar New York, a gay establishment at 50 West 17th Street, denied or attempted to deny entry to women on Saturday evenings, which the club promotes as mens night.

Last supper at Beatrice Inn is end of a 50-year runBy Ed Gold
The last supper. There was wine and there was bread.
But there was also lots of veal, filet of sole, wild salmon, spaghetti and meatballs, and chef Bruno Mazzas final round of Friday specials, ossu buco and duck. And martinis, lots of martinis.

Ludlow nightclub is not music to neighbors earsBy Ellen Keohane
At 11 on Friday night, about 30 people lingered outside Pianos, a three-story bar/club/restaurant in the Lower East Side. On the sidewalk, smokers exhaled into the cool fall air. Others talked loudly into their cell phones. One clearly intoxicated young woman let out a high-pitched squeal before running into the arms of a friend she had been waiting for. Drivers, lined up along Ludlow and Stanton Streets, honked their horns as people jumped in and out of waiting taxis.

With a new center, seniors finally have the floorBy Lincoln Anderson
To the pounding of a wooden kettledrum, clattering of cymbals and high stepping of traditional lion dancers, a new $7.3 million center for Chinatown seniors opened last Friday morning at Grand and Centre Streets.

No arrests at Critical Mass rideBy Ellen Keohane
To the surprise of Critical Mass riders, for the first time in more than a year, no one was arrested on Friday nights Critical Mass ride. Bill DiPaola, founder and executive director of Times Up!, the grassroots environmental group that helps organize the monthly ride, said there were no arrests and no harassment of riders by police. A police spokesperson confirmed there were no arrests.

Digging for information on Houston Street big digBy Tequila Minsky
Residents and local merchants learned more about the Houston Street reconstruction project at a public forum held last Thursday at the A.I.A. center on LaGuardia Place The purpose of the forum was to address community concerns about the project, which started this summer and is slated to be completed by spring 2008, reconstructing Houston Street from West Street to the Bowery.

BID director brings new sense of purpose to the jobBy Albert Amateau
Orchard Street, the very name of which has long been a synonym for discount specialty shops, is alive with new commercial activity these days, and the interchange between the old and the new is what makes it an exciting place for Joseph Cunin, executive director of the Lower East Side Business Improvement District.

Market forces at workJeffrey Ruhalter, who runs the butcher shop in the Essex Street Market between Delancey and Rivington Streets, has a gallery and community art space behind the counter, as well. Ruhalter said the family-owned business started in the 1920s and is now in its fourth generation and has been in the market since the day it opened.

Its all in the family at a longtime Loisaida barberBy Sara G. Levin
A chubby 3-year-old squirmed under his yellow smock at Rauls Unisex barbershop and salon at 11 Avenue B Saturday, one of the neighborhoods oldest remaining family-owned shops. Hes here because his dad has been coming for 30 years, said Constance Velez, 16, daughter of the shops owner, Edgar Velez. As salsa beats emanated from the radio, she nodded at the toddler and her cousin, Raul, Jr., who was cutting his hair.

L.E.S. as film setArt outpost cultivates from outside the mainstreamBy Sara G. Levin
A red neon star throbs behind the grated Clayton Gallery and Outlaw Museum storefront on Essex Street. The stars lines within a circle represent a magic symbol by John Dee  the mathematician and philosophical advisor to Elizabeth I  said Nico Dios, the works artist. Backed by cabal history and blocked by a distorting chain-link grate, the image is somehow emblematic of Clayton Pattersons 20-year-old gallery, which strives to show work dipped in a mystic or rebellious aura while, at the same time, being accessible to the general public.

After brawl on the mall, Parks explains new planBy Daniel Wallace
How long does it take to develop a mall? A baffling question, if you ask residents of the Lower East Side as they walk past the barren Allen Street Mall between Broome and Delancey Streets, for which the answer seems to be: seven years, and still running.

VILLAGER Arts & Entertainment

The cost of living in SlumariaBy Scott Harrah
The real estate boom has bypassed those beneath the poverty line, as many people on public assistance continue to live in squalid buildings run by slumlords. In Janeen Stevenss disturbing new drama Toughing Slumaria, a group of impoverished single mothers from different ethnic backgrounds think theyre in luck when they find what appears to be the perfect home for themselves and their children: a clean, vermin-free, well-maintained building with working heat and plumbing that is actually affordable.

La Traviata enchants at the Amato, but can the enchantment last?By Michael Clive
If you missed the Amato Operas Tosca last month  or even if you didnt  you still have eight chances over the next three weeks to see the companys lucid production of Verdis La Traviata, which met customarily high performance standards at the season premiere October 22. But before you go, its best to bone up on the two classic love stories upon which this particular La Traviata is based.

Girding a fleeting art form for the futureBy Rachel Fershleiser
If RoseLee Goldberg has her way, this November will make New Yorkers see performance art in a whole new light.
I decided it was really time to put a big frame around performance, she says. Its relevant to the centerpiece of art history, and shouldnt always be put on the side.

Dont call it a comebackBy Noah Fowle
New York Doll has everything a great documentary needsa brutal history, an injured hero, and his heartfelt return. Its subject, Arthur Killer Kane, gained infamy as the stoic bassist of the original gender-bending glam band The New York Dolls in the early 1970s.

Koch On FilmBy Ed KochShopgirl (+) A pleasant evening of entertainment but not worthy of A.O. Scotts New York Times review. He wrote, Every year, Hollywood cuts yards of so-called romantic comedy from bolts of synthetic cloth.Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (-) This farce is as incoherent as its title and it left me at the starting gate. I felt embarrassed when I realized that I often had no inkling as to what they were saying or doing or where the gibberish was headed.